Dragon Tea {CSI Case File No. 55}

Case File No. 55 is open for investigation at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration, and what a fun case file it is:

This week, as part of CSI's birthday celebration, we decided to revisit our very first Case File and scraplift a member, design team member, or guest designer. What a fun blast from the past it was looking through the album. There were so many awesome pages I loved, but in the end, I took elements from design team member Tina Walker's layout, including the basic composition (turned on its side) and the painty strip:

and member Patricia Basson's layout--the shelf idea:

And I used the teacups from the fabulous CSI Coordinates Michele made for us this week:

Now, onto my layout. Meet Godzilla. You will likely see more of him in the coming months. I am a keeper of bearded dragons. I've had many over the past 15 years or so. They live in my classroom during the week, and they're the perfect class pet because they're very docile. My last adult beardie died last winter, so we got a new one. He turned out to be a fierce little guy--very uncharacteristic for bearded dragons--and I knew I wouldn't be able to let my students handle him, so Farzad decided he'd take them to his Maaco shop, and there he lives.

Farzad takes scads of photos and emails them to me. I decided it would be fun to make a scrapbook for Godzilla that Farzad could keep at his shop, and this is the first page I made.

I have to credit my brilliant friend Tracee with the idea of putting Godzilla in the teacups. Thanks, Tracee!

Clues I used; Evidence: Teacup accent, leaves, stitching, scallops, plain white background; Testimony: well, I got carried away and forgot about the Testimony, but I added a little tag with one of the inspiration words.

Here are some details. As I said, I completely got carried away and forgot about the Testimony prompts, so I added this little tag to the teacup. This is my favorite picture of Godzilla--he looks so sweet and innocent. The leaves are from a die by Cottage Cutz, I think. I'd been wanting to try the method of adding paint that Tina talked about in her video about her layout where she swipes paint across the page using an old credit card. It was super easy. I'll definitely be doing this again.

This big brad, which matches the palette perfectly, didn't show up well in the  picture of my layout. The fuzzy green brad is by Sassafras Lass. The green paper is by K& Co., and the brown dot strip was trimmed from a Scenic Route paper. The double scallop border punch is Martha Stewart.

I rescued some old lettering for my title--Heidi Swapp chipboard and Making Memories felt letters, which I stitched on because they'd lost their stickiness. The quote comes from Brian Andreas, creator of Storypeople. I adore him and have all of his books.  I thought a Brian Andreas quote would be fun for this whimsical page. The story I chose was: I was never good at hide & seek because I'd always make enough noise so my friends would be sure to find me. I don't have anyone to play those games with any more, but now & then I make enough noise just in case someone is still looking & hasn't found me yet.

I popped this teacup and one at the top up with pop dots for added dimension. The brads here are by Colorbox (the fabric) and American Crafts.

Come see the rest of the cool pages by the design team and guest designers. This month, Pink Paislee is sponsoring CSI, so you'll definitely want to play for a chance at the ENTIRE collection of Secret Crush.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page!